"What did you just say?" Logan said, staring at the grey-skinned humanoid.

The goblin opened its mouth again, but its movements weren't natural in the slightest. The crystal plates on its jaw and temples were grinding together as it tried, and failed, to sound a word out. All Logan heard was a drawn-out groan, just like it had tried to mere moments before.

Logan suspected that it wasn't intrinsically able to communicate. He had seen the goblin corpses in the pit before they had evolved into these soul crystal variants, and they appeared to be closer to wild beasts than anything intelligent. Now that they had evolved, however, it seemed as if they had gained the ability to speak.

"Eeeegggg," The goblin said, realigning its jaw before repeating itself. "Egg."

It held its hand out as if Logan would just hand over the egg. He stared at its open palm and said nothing. Could it really extract the egg from his body, or was it asking Logan to kill himself so that it could tear the egg out of his stomach? Either way, he wouldn't try to remove the egg before they got back to a city.

It was quite literally his lifeline. Although Logan didn't know why Janet couldn't be revived, it didn't mean that the others were unable to be saved if they passed away. Not to mention that the egg granted him immense power. It could boost him an entire minor realm, pushing him from the fourth stage to late Body Tempering in the seventh.

A jump of three stages was quite substantial.

It also cloaked him in flames, which were no less helpful than the increase in strength. Logan had directly used those flames to kill two Crystal Rats and discouraged the Rat King from attacking him. Without it, he would likely die within a month. He wouldn't hand it over even if he could.

"Egg?" Logan muttered, glancing down at his stomach. "You want me to give you the egg? Why?"

Still, that didn't stop him from trying to distract the goblin. It didn't know that he had already made his decision, so while it was happy to talk, he would distract it and allow his companions to escape.

The goblin tried to talk again, but all that came out was gibberish. It began to scowl as its frustrations mounted. Logan was about to say something when the goblin reached out and tried to grab him, the velociraptor stepping forward and crouching without any obvious command.

Shit, they can mentally communicate as well? Logan thought, using Flash Step to avoid its grasp and jump back. He barely avoided its clawed hand, his mind racing with different ideas. His first thought had been to use their limited teamwork to trip them up and delay the fight. Now, it looked impossible since the raptors could receive orders telepathically.

Seeing that it had failed to apprehend him, the goblin bellowed angrily. The other goblins stopped moving around the cavern, their mental attacks disappearing as they lined up. While they were getting into formation, the goblin chief held its arm out.

Logan didn't know what it was doing until its armour rippled. The plates on its arm and shoulder bulged, every colour of the rainbow suddenly refracting through them. It was beautiful and shocking, especially because it looked like the monster was shedding its main source of protection.

The liquefied armour slid down the goblin chief's arm and gathered on the tips of its fingers. It looked ready to fall off in large droplets, but that never happened. Instead, the droplets began to smooth out, forming a long stick encasing its hand. It wasn't until another few seconds passed that the stick flattened out and became a long sword that encased the goblin's hand.

The sight was so shocking that he didn't react until he was forced to. The velociraptor charged forward, and Logan jumped back with Flash Step. He gained some distance from his enemies and reached the end of the hall, but with a squawk, the velociraptor pounced forward and landed right in front of him.

Logan was immediately forced to dodge its bite, the crystal teeth clacking as its jaw snapped shut in front of his face. Thankfully, Logan had learned a new technique in his spare time. Celerity was a speed-boosting ability like Flash Step, but it didn't condense all of its potential into a single movement. This allowed him to move slightly faster than he should've been able to over a long distance.

While it hadn't sounded too useful before the fight with the Rat King, Logan had learned from his mistake and picked it up in the last two weeks. Now, it was already proving itself to be invaluable, the technique helping him to avoid a severe bite wound on his neck.

A moment later, his body ignited with flames as the egg finally kicked in. That was also the moment that the goblin attacked. With its elbow raised up high, he thrust his sword down at Logan's shoulder in an attempt to spear him through.

Logan took his time to use Parry, his spear meeting the crystal sword. The weapons connected with a thunderous bang. He managed to push the crystal blade to the side in time, but the monster's strength and leverage made it the winner of the exchange. Just the fact that it could attack him from above was enough, and yet it clearly had much greater physical strength than him. That was why Logan stumbled back a few steps. He barely managed to remain on his feet, but since he had been retreating with the help of Celerity, the impact wasn't sudden enough to throw him to the ground.

Thankfully, Logan's lack of progress with his self-made technique had left him with some spare time. He had picked up a few moves from the Shop to cover his weaknesses. Little did he know that Celerity would save him on the first engagement, and now it was time to try another new technique out.

With a stomp of his foot, Logan stopped sliding backwards as he reflected all of his momentum. This caused him to lunge forward suddenly when he should've been reeling from the initial clash. Rebound was just that type of technique though, the concept of vibration doing some pretty supernatural things.

Logan now possessed three movement-related techniques. Each one used a different concept, making it easier for them to merge in the future. Celerity utilised the concept of elasticity. He was studying his third concept a bit early, but the benefits were obvious. There simply wasn't an endurance-based technique that used rotation or vibration, so it didn't hurt to learn it.

The goblin's eyes widened as it tried to bring its sword back to defend. Logan's spear slipped past its hastily constructed defence and stabbed into the goblin's shoulder, but his intermediate technique actually failed to activate. All his spear managed to do was crack the shoulder plate and draw a trickle of blood.

This enraged the goblin, its sword coming down in a deadly arc. Logan used Flash Step to avoid the slice and disengage from the fight. He paused for a moment to consider his options before turning around and using Celerity to charge up the stairs. The last thing he saw was another look of surprise on the goblin's face as it just sat there.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Once Logan climbed the first set of stairs, he heard an enraged shout echo up the stairwell. That was followed by the thudding of dinosaur feet. The chief was following after him with his forty or so cavalrymen. Logan became nervous until he realised the sounds were getting further away. The stairs may have been wide and tall, but that didn't make the bipedal dinosaurs good at running up them.

Once he reached the top, Logan continued to run away by mixing up his usage of Celerity and Flash Step. He could only use the latter every few seconds, but by using Celerity between the gaps, he could actually build up potential faster. Of course, these extra advantages were due to the fact that Celerity and Flash Step were combinable into an intermediate technique.

They naturally synergised quite well.

Logan thought he was in the clear after nearly ten minutes of running through the tunnels without seeing an enemy, but he soon heard the familiar thudding of clawed feet. It wasn't a minute later that he could hear the panting of a raptor behind him, its faint squeaks of joy echoing down the tunnel when it saw him.

Glancing back, he soon understood why one had caught up to him. The raptors had terrible agility, but their top speed in a relatively straight tunnel was faster than Logan's. That wouldn't be the case if he had learned an intermediate movement technique. Until then, he was going to be on the slower side.

Logan continued running for another minute before he was forced to stop. A raptor nipped at the back of his neck and tried to grab him, causing him to lean forward and spin around. He simultaneously pulled out his spear and used his new intermediate technique. It came together and, when it slid past the raptor's head and sunk into the goblin's neck, coalesced into the full technique.

A slight smile touched his lips as the thin plate of protective crystal shattered and fell apart. Logan immediately pulled the tip of his spear out and jumped back, only a few bloody lines on his forearm as proof of his success. Those healed quickly enough, the raptor licking its lips after it almost took a bite out of him.

The goblin winced in pain, growing angrier by the second. Its wound slowly closed up, but the goblin would never fully recover from its injuries. Its neck erupted a second later. Blood spurted out of the fist-sized hole, each pulse weaker than the last as its blood pressure dropped like a brick.

The raptor cried out as its rider fell to the ground. Logan took that chance to pounce on its back with the help of Flash Step. It tried to buck him off, but the dinosaur was only around a metre tall and definitely not in the high stages of Body Tempering. If he were to make a guess, it was either in the early or middle stages, but it was hard to estimate these things since strength didn't correlate well with cultivation level.

Logan directly overpowered the raptor and dragged it to the ground. The dinosaur thrashed and kicked for its life, the flames causing it to cry out in pain. The crystal feathers on its back directly fell out as its skin burned away, but in the end, his grip on its neck killed it. The flames on his arms directly incinerated its arteries and windpipe.

[You have slain an Uncommon Mortal at the Sixth Step, Armoured Savage.]

[You have slain a Common Mortal at the Fifth Step, Anisaurus.]

Logan sold the bodies and ran. He also skimmed over the analysis and was shocked to learn that the Armoured Savages, as they were called, had no soul-based attacks. Instead, it was the Anisaurus that had a mental attack. They possessed the same mental suppression as the Crystal Rats. As Common monsters, that was also the only ability they had. Their riders, on the other hand, possessed two bloodline abilities. The first was its ability to communicate telepathically, which made Logan pick up the pace. He could already hear more of them coming, but hopefully he would reach the pit and climb up the rope before then.

The second was Armament Creation. Similar to Logan's spear, Obsidian End, the Savages could alter the form of any mineral-based material. In this case, change the form of their crystalline armour, moulding it into a weapon at the expense of their innate protection. The leader of the Savages had used it to create its arm sword, but the one Logan had killed moments ago didn't have enough time to form one.

It most likely expected its mount to pull him down to the ground while it formed a weapon to finish him off, if not outright tearing him to shreds on the spot. Unluckily for it, Logan had turned around and attacked before it had the chance. Even a rabbit would fight back if its life were threatened, let alone him.

Perhaps they were naive to not expect retaliation?

Logan filed that information away as two Armoured Savages approached. He didn't want to get surrounded, so he used his intermediate technique to try and cripple the one raptor. Sadly, the technique failed and only ripped apart some crystal feathers, the impact barely making the raptor fall over. Logan used a combination of Celerity to dodge the other raptor's bite and Parry to deflect the sword of the Savage on its back.

The raptor tried to claw at Logan. Its arms were short, but as he stood on its right side, the beast almost managed to claw his arm off. He stepped back and was almost tripped up by the raptor's tail, the beast spinning around to try to swipe him off his feet.

Logan was forced to jump in the air. That was when he began to understand how helpful telepathy could be, the rider having planned for this series of events. With a flick of his wrist, the Armoured Savage thrust his arm-blade at Logan. He tried to use Parry again, but without solid footing, he had no leverage to push the blade aside.

That was why it pierced straight through Logan's chest and out his back. The feeling of an ice-cold blade in his lungs and heart made him cry out in pain, but it didn't incapacitate him. He took the chance to slowly land on the ground and use his intermediate technique. Obsidian End tore through the dinosaur's rib cage without issue, the following explosion tearing its lungs and heart to shreds.

As the beast fell over, Logan stepped back, allowing the blade to slide out of his chest. He grunted in pain as a few spurts of blood erupted from the wound. A bout of dizziness also assaulted him, but he didn't let that stop him, his spear moving once more. He ducked under the swing of a crystal blade aimed at his head and used his new technique again.

Obsidian End sliced through the thin plate on its stomach. The Armoured Savage had long since gotten up after falling over, but it had been distracted trying to get its mount to stand. As it turned out, Logan had injured its knee. It would heal relatively quickly and wasn't anything worse than a sprain, but that was more than enough to stop it right now.

As such, the Armoured Savage had taken his moment of weakness to try and behead him, which subsequently allowed Logan to spin around and finish him off. As the Savage fell to its knees and slowly bled out, Logan's face regained its colour and his torn robe began to knit itself back together, the flesh underneath recovering in the next few seconds.

[You have slain a Common Mortal at the Sixth Step, Anisaurus.]

[You have slain an Uncommon Mortal at the Seventh Step, Armoured Savage.]

Seeing that one raptor was dead while the other couldn't chase, Logan turned around and continued running.